Professional Adviser is delighted to announce the launch of the new Working Lunches in partnership with Baillie Gifford and First State Investments. Travelling across the UK to provide valuable market insights for Senior Financial Advisers.

Despite the underperformance of fixed income we discuss in this Spotlight guide why the value proposition of the asset class hasn't gone away. In particular we review how the RLAM management team use existing, proven funds to actively manage consistent monthly income streams and adapt the portfolio to changing interest rate and credit market factors.

Within this guide, you will find some surprising survey results from FE, a selection of adviser opinions and some Architas views too. We hope this guide will provide you with some food for thought on this burning issue.

FSA confirms plans to save firms £1m a year

The Financial Services Authority has confirmed it will merge the customer functions in its approved persons regime into a single category, saving firms a total of £1m a year.

The FSA published proposals to create a new generic customer function in August 2006 as a way to reduce the number of forms firms have to submit per employee under the approved persons regime.

In a paper published today, the FSA says it has received strong support from the industry for the proposals, as they are designed to bring administrative savings and flexibility for firms.

In particular, the change eliminates the need for firms to submit a form when an employee already approved for a customer function within that firm, for example investment advice, wants to move between customer functions or add a customer function to one already held, such as advising on pension transfers.

However, the employee must still be competent to perform any new activity and the FSA says merging the functions does not give the employee the green light to advise on activities without considering the training and competence requirements.

The merger will come into effect on 1 November 2007 at the same time as other Handbook changes relating to the implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).

David Kenmir, managing director of regulatory services at the FSA, says: "Through our Handbook review programme and as part of our Better Regulation agenda, the FSA is removing regulations whose costs outweigh the benefits they bring. The merger of customer functions will save firms a further £1 million a year."

If you have any comments you would like to add to this story or would like to speak to its author about a similar subject, telephone Emily Perryman on 020 7034 2680 or email [email protected].